End-to-End Detection Pipeline
Raw NetCDF → georeferenced detections → PostGIS → REST → 3D globe.
The brief
Build a complete production-grade space-GIS pipeline: ingest 10 frames of GOES-18 ABI Band 7 NetCDF from the NOAA AWS Open Data bucket; georeference each frame (parallax-corrected); threshold-detect hotspots; cluster hotspot pixels across consecutive frames into plume tracks; score each track for confidence (geometric coherence, brightness consistency, motion); persist results to PostGIS with proper indexes; expose a FastAPI /detections REST endpoint with bbox, time-range, and confidence filters; render results live on a Cesium globe served from the same FastAPI app. Deliverable is a public GitHub repository + a 5-minute video walking through the pipeline.
From Hawaiʻi — what this capstone asks of you
You've come from 'what is a coordinate system?' (Week 1) to building a production pipeline (Capstone 5). Whatever you point this pipeline at — a Kīlauea eruption, a Pacific hurricane, a Falcon 9 launch, a coral-bleaching event — you carry the responsibility of what you do with what you see. The technical work is the easy part. The kuleana is the work.
Rubric
- Pipeline runs end-to-end on the provided 10-frame test dataset
- Detections match the known launch ground truth within 5 km and 30 seconds
- False-positive rate < 10% on the test dataset
- PostGIS schema includes appropriate GIST indexes for spatial and time queries
- REST API is documented via OpenAPI, all endpoints respond within 200 ms
- Cesium globe renders detections with hover-popups
- GitHub repo is public with clear README, setup instructions, license
- 5-minute video clearly explains architecture decisions
Deliverable
Public GitHub repo (Python + JavaScript) + 5-minute video on YouTube/Vimeo + signed-off README
Dataset
https://github.com/ops-sketch/academy-labs/tree/main/capstones/05-end-to-end-pipeline
Earned credential
Successful completion of this capstone (all rubric items met) mints the Certified Space GIS Architect certificate at /academy/verify/{certId}/.